Grandma's 80th Birthday Party

We threw a party in my back yard for my Grandmother's 80th birthday. Due to the mass amounts of family traveling from out of state (Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, Texas, California), keeping the party a surprise just wasn't possible. What we did keep from her was the theme. She has a "thing" for flamingo's - I'm not saying it's a good thing but it grew into a constant source of ribbing and luckily she takes jokes well. We coordinated the entire party around flamingo's without her knowing anything about it!!!

My grandfather died 2 months after the "baby" of the family was born, leaving my Grandmother to raise 11 children by herself. All 11 children have children and some of them have children. Needless to say there are a LOT of us when we all get together (just over 100!). 168 family members and friends turned out to celebrate my Grandmother's 80th birthday. All four of her siblings along with two of my grandfather's sibling were present along with most of her children, grandchildren and great grandkids! I wish I had so many more pictures from the day, somehow the day FLEW by - one minute we were waiting for Grandma and the next it was 9pm (and we still had a yard full of people).

The birthday invitation is handmade from Stampin' Up products. The glitter didn't show up well in the scan. In fact the card looks sooooo much better in real life.

The Birthday Girl!!!

Several Aunts, Uncles and cousins came over to help raise the two tents in the back yard.

We smoked 250 chicken halves.....thanks so much to the men who "offered" to do the grilling.

My Aunt made this cake - isn't it awesome and it's three dimensional!





I designed tee shirts to celebrate the event. I had them printed on bright pink, light pink and black for all the guys afraid to wear pink. MAS are my grandmothers initials. There were 125 people in the custom designed t's that day!

I also made name tags - it's not like my family is small and people do tend to get us all confused.

My Aunts and cousin's provided all the the sides. We'd thought about catering the event, but decided that we're just too good of cooks to have someone else fix our dinner!! hehehe
Of course Grandma had to make her famous potato salad herself.

I spent 2 months re-landscaping the backyard in all PINK.

The theme.....



To help people keep track of the cups and not go through several hundred, I made tags to place on everyone's flamingo glass so they'd know which one is theirs. They got to keep their cup as a suvenior!

The centerpieces....

A quates competition is a tradion in our family. It's a cross between horse shoes and washers - east coast thing. The winners of the competition were Michael & Todd.



The little kids wishing they'd be allowed to play.....